Transition - An Example of Colorado’s Special Failure to Serve Blind Youth

Transition - An Example of Colorado’s Special Failure to Serve Blind Youth

As soon as Stacy Reemer's son Derek got into middle school, she began asking educators at his annual Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings "What comes next?  What comes after high school?"

Stacy's son is blind and was bound for college to study computer science.  She simply wanted to ensure that plans were laid in a timely way - that there would be no last-minute scrambles.  But it wasn't until his IEP meeting in his junior year that she learned about the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) - and that by happenstance.  A DVR counselor was in the building that day, and the counselor was invited to join the meeting.  Stacy learned all about DVR and how it could help her son post-graduation.  Among other things they were told her son should apply for DVR in the second semester of his senior year.  She found this a bit frustrating, but in early 2013, that's what they did.

Emily Romero applied for DVR services during her sophomore year.  She wanted to attend the Colorado Center for the Blind's summer Youth Program in order to gain intensive training in assistive technology and travel with the white cane.  Her sights were set on college and she felt this would be an opportunity for her to  get her skills up to the standards she would need in higher education.  She wanted to be as independent and proficient as possible in that more demanding learning environment which assumes proficiency in technology and every other area.  Initially her relatively new DVR counselor was positive, says her father Everett, but after her counselor spoke with another, more experienced counselor serving blind clients, he denied her request. 

"He said he was told such training wasn't done, that it wasn't necessary," says Everett.

And then the waiting list slammed the door on Emily, whose case had not progressed when her request for transition services were denied.

Quinita Thomas also wanted to attend Colorado Center for the Blind’s (CCB's) summer program in 2013, but she didn't even get as far as Emily.  She was discouraged from applying for DVR services, told that the agency would not send her to CCB for the summer program.  Then a 16-year-old mostly advocating for herself, she didn't understand that she had the right to apply no matter what under the federal rules for Vocational Rehabilitation.

Transitioning students have been denied critical DVR services at a crucial moment as they move from the relative safe educational environment out into the competitive adult world.  Because of DVR’s long-standing practice (not a written policy), transitioning students, their parents and K-12 educators have been told they need not apply for services until their final semester of their senior year of high school.  If that weren't bad enough, the better part of two graduating classes of Coloradoans with disabilities have been caught on DVR's catastrophe of a waiting list.  DVR moved to "Order of Selection" in early 2013.  Known as a "waiting list," it meant that all new applicants would be in limbo until funds became available to serve them.  And for ten months, from April 2013 till February 2014, no one was taken off the waiting list.

Left to fend on their own, the families of blind students have been faced with the prospect of finding funding for their blind children and purchasing costly assistive computer technology for those children intending to go on to higher education.  Other students in transition find no DVR services to help bridge the gap to gainful employment.

To date, 3700 names have been removed from the waiting list, while 3500 remain.  DVR Director Joelle Brouner states that DVR is taking 400 to 450 new applications per month.  With no new names slated to come off the waiting list until perhaps next June, it is almost a certainty that the 2015 graduating class will be victims of the waiting list too.

Transition is not something new.  It had been in place for decades when with the 1990 passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Congress put new emphasis on schools to provide effective transition services to youth with disabilities.  In part IDEA provided for transition planning to begin as early as age 14.  In its Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act in 1992, Congress also gave greater emphasis to transition, including essentially the same language to define transition services.  In subsequent reauthorizations of both laws, transition language has been maintained and strengthened.

In May of 2014, the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), the federal agency that oversees all state Vocational Rehabilitation programs, defined transition as:

a coordinated set of activities for a student, designed within an outcome-oriented process, that promotes movement from school to post-school activities, including post-secondary education, vocational training, integrated employment (including supported employment), continuing and adult education, adult services, independent living, or community participation. The coordinated set of activities shall be based upon the individual student’s needs, taking into account the student’s preferences and interests, and shall include instruction, community experiences, the development of employment and other post-school adult living objectives, and when appropriate, acquisition of daily living skills and functional vocational evaluation.

In its Policy Manual Colorado DVR discusses transition as follows:

15.6 APPLICATION/POINT OF REFERRAL

There is no specified point at which referral to DVR and the DVR application must occur for a student. The law does not specify either a minimum or maximum age for referral to DVR. Exact timing of the referral may vary based on individualized need. DVR staff will consider the following guidance as discussions with education staff and others occur around point of referral and submission of an application for DVR services. Referral of a student should occur when:

                  - the youth’s focus has shifted (or is in the process of shifting) from education to employment;…

Derek, Emily and Quinita were all thinking about what would come after high school for them - college. Still, their individual needs and concerns were ignored in the face of an unwritten practice treated as policy.  Throughout federal regs and DVR's Policy Manual, the phrase "as early as possible" frequently appears, and yet all three of these blind Coloradoans were put off, postponed until a fixed point in DVR's unwritten rules.

It is clear to the NFB of Colorado that cooperation between the K-12 system and DVR is inadequate.  Furthermore, DVR's practice of advising referral in the second semester of the senior year violates its own written policy in several key areas:

1.  It defines a specific point in time.

2.  It is clearly not "as early as possible."

3.  When blind applicants with a clear sense of preparing for post-secondary options have presented  themselves to DVR, the agency has turned them away in favor of an arbitrary timeline.

In April, DVR held its first public hearings on its required State Plan in seven years.  That in itself says a great deal about where DVR is coming from, and it is a positive development that the NFB of Colorado applauds.

DVR put forth several discussion items.  Number 4 asked "Who could DVR be helping that we are not reaching?"  At the hearing held in the Metro area at the Colorado Center for the Blind, NFB of Colorado brought up the issue of transition.  Below is part of the written summary of the public comment which was submitted to DVR:

**             The State Plan should provide for working with blind youth beginning at age 16, including provision of pre-vocational services designed to aid in developing understanding of personal abilities and capacity of blind people in general through work, challenge recreational, and other extra-educational activities.  The State Plan should acknowledge and develop shared responsibilities, including costs, with Local Educational Agencies where appropriate for blind youth beginning at age 16.

The four public hearings held across the state in April resulted in a number of recommendations from the State Rehabilitation Council (SRC), a body required for each state's rehabilitation program.  We won a battle as the SRC took our comments and included age 16 as part of its recommendations.   However, DVR’s written response is difficult to understand.  Are they acknowledging that there isn’t supposed to be a specific time for transition, and they’ll work to ensure that the second-semester practice is ended?  Or are they stubbornly rejecting the recommendation of the SRC?   What it clearly doesn’t do is acknowledge that its field staff have been in violation of the federal regulations and its own policy for years.  That is the only thing clear in DVR’s response to Recommendation 3. <a href=”http:// www.dvrcolorado.com/PDFs/StatePlan2015.pdf”>(Download the State Plan 2015 PDF with this link.)</a>

Despite her efforts to avoid a scramble to get services in place for her son Derek, that's what they got.  Apparently aware that the waiting list would shut her young client out of services, Derek's DVR counselor contacted the Reemers and within a couple of weeks got everything in place for him.  Derek is now entering his second year at UC-Boulder with the support of DVR funding.

During her August 18 orientation week at Regis University, Emily received a voice message from her counselor informing her that her name was one of 1503 removed from the waiting list.  She returned his call but was unable to connect.  When we spoke to her on August 24, the eve of her first day of classes, she was without services.  She was equipped for school with a laptop and a 40-minute demo version of JAWS and the free screen reader NVDA - a relatively strong substitute for JAWS, but not the screen reader with which she is most familiar and proficient.  She still lacks a Braille display, which she uses to read from her laptop and is her best learning and comprehension approach - especially in Spanish classes.  She also needs a Victor Reader Stream so that she can listen to those books she receives in the alternate DAISY format from Learning Ally and Bookshare.

Quinita also started classes on August 25 without DVR support.  She began contacting DVR on February 14 this year, and is now on the waiting list.  She has an old laptop loaned her by a member of the NFB of Colorado, equipped with JAWS, and feels she has patched things together as best she could under the circumstances.

Because all DVR cost services must be pre-approved in writing, there is no chance that Emily or Quinita will receive support for their first semester's tuition and books.  Belatedly, their counselors could step up and get their assistive technology ASAP.

  

Certainly, both the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) and DVR as a whole need to step up and provide timely transition services to Colorado youth who are blind or have other disabilities.  The best place to start is to follow their own policies and stop hiding behind their own mumbo jumbo.  The futures of our Colorado kids with disabilities that is at stake.